Attempting 40%+ ABV beer... "Barley Brandy"

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I'm honestly not entirely sure. I thought I was babying the yeast quite a bit. The first batch was a high gravity but the US-05 put a huge dent in it. That brought the gravity way down for the 099 and then I fed it small doses of the ridiculous gravity wort... So... basically feeding it pure sugar.

I was always pretty confident it was not a fermentable issue and the beano addition, and subsequent inactivity, I think backs that up.

I pitched huge, healthy slugs of yeast...

I am honestly not sure why the yeast, especially the turbo yeast, crapped out at such a low ABV (about 17%). It should have gone a lot higher than that. And now that i have brought the ABV down through dilution, it seems to be moving again.

So... I'm not sure what the real issue was or how to fix it.
 
It could be when you made your super high gravity wort, which if I remember correctly you did by boiling for hours, you created a ton of unfermentables.
 
But even if so, how does that explain the experience? If boiling too long created unfermentable sugars, wouldn't the beano have effected at least some if that? IIRC, the beano had little or no effect. What did have an effect was dilution, which would only seem to change ABV, not alter the fermentability.

I'm not arguing with the concept, I understand the long boil could have had that effect. I am just wondering if that explains Cape's yeast crapping out and picking up again after dilution.
 
Cape Brewing said:
How do you produce unfermentables by boiling for a long time??
Click to expand...

Same as when you do a decoction mash. It's the Maillard reaction.

EDIT: moto enlightened you first I see ;)
 
I don't think we can say yet that Capes yeast picked up again. We won't know for several more years, when he takes a gravity reading.
 
bottlebomber said:
We won't know for several more years, when he takes a gravity reading.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. :)

Maybe Cape and the guy who forgot his barleywine in the basement for 12 years in another thread should hang out. They could get together to not brew and not drink.

Man, I have a hard time leaving my beer alone for a week or two.
 
Yeeeah I'm probably not qualified to criticize. Especially since the lagering fridge is also full. Lager a beer for 6 months? No prob.

image-77365590.jpg
 
Yeah, but do you forget any? I've had 25 gallons going at a time (nowhere near yours, but as much as my bathtub could hold) with 10 plus gallons of home brew bottled in the fridge to drink, plus my commercial beer fridge full, and I am still anxious to monkey to with it and can't wait for it to finish.

I'm just an impatient mofo, I guess.
 
Cape Brewing said:
I'm honestly not entirely sure. I thought I was babying the yeast quite a bit. The first batch was a high gravity but the US-05 put a huge dent in it. That brought the gravity way down for the 099 and then I fed it small doses of the ridiculous gravity wort... So... basically feeding it pure sugar.

I was always pretty confident it was not a fermentable issue and the beano addition, and subsequent inactivity, I think backs that up.

I pitched huge, healthy slugs of yeast...

I am honestly not sure why the yeast, especially the turbo yeast, crapped out at such a low ABV (about 17%). It should have gone a lot higher than that. And now that i have brought the ABV down through dilution, it seems to be moving again.

So... I'm not sure what the real issue was or how to fix it.
Click to expand...

I have heard that over pitching can reduce attenuation. But that is in a normal fermentation. I'm not sure how it would apply here.
 
bottlebomber said:
It could be when you made your super high gravity wort, which if I remember correctly you did by boiling for hours, you created a ton of unfermentables.
Click to expand...

Good call.

SittingDuck said:
But even if so, how does that explain the experience? If boiling too long created unfermentable sugars, wouldn't the beano have effected at least some if that? IIRC, the beano had little or no effect. What did have an effect was dilution, which would only seem to change ABV, not alter the fermentability.

I'm not arguing with the concept, I understand the long boil could have had that effect. I am just wondering if that explains Cape's yeast crapping out and picking up again after dilution.
Click to expand...

The beano would only affect starches that hadn't been converted. The maillard reactions change sugars that have been converted into more complex sugars.
 
Ok, so that says beano may not have worked. (Which I wasn't aware of, so thanks. :) ).

But it doesn't answer why, if the reaction altered the sugars, dilution SEEMS to have made a difference. Dilution wouldn't change carmelized sugars back to regular.

Again, not disputing that the maillard reaction occurred or that there are a ton of unfermentables in the wort. Just trying to explain the data of fermentation stopping and (possibly) starting after diluting it.
 
I don't think that it is fermenting, unless Cape made some miscalculations somewhere and there was more alcohol is the beer than he'd thought. It could be bubbling because 50 degree water was added to the 70 degree beer, and it is warming up now.
 
I just took a gravity and its come down just under ten points.


It was 1050-1052 after I diluted it and it is 1043 now and the air lock is still popping often and regularly.
 
Fear of Revvy's airlock post is why I filled my last post with seems like and possibly. :)

But according to Cape, this airlock activity is not just change in temp or cat bumping it. Unless his hydrometer is broken.
 
Trust me... I get the airlock situation... But like I was saying before, this beer has sat for months in a spot that keeps it a consistant 65 degrees and the water I used to dilute was the same temp... And it was four freakin days ago. I dont think the water is still adjusting temp. The beer has had months to sit and off-gas so I was confident when I got airlock activity, especially as much as I am getting, that something was active. It is still popping pretty often and the temp has risen up to 69 on its own.... So, again, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess it is fermenting again.

Plus there is the whole 8-9 point drop in gravity.
 
He's going to eisen it all off anyway so added water isn't a big deal, as long as he can actually eisen enough. I'm really interested to hear how trying to eisen 50% of a beer goes. I'd like to do something similar when my pipeline is built up to try and make a hop liquor, although I'm not sure how the hops would like getting so much oxygen post fermentation.
 
I will take things step by step. I got to see if this still keeps fermenting. If it doesn't, I'm dead in the water. I also have to try it again and see if the current teast activity has sucked up the oxygen and the perhaps the oxidized foavor it had now. If it doesn't, I'm dead in the water.

If I can get it to dry out and lose the cardboard flavor, then I will freeze concentrate it as far as I can fet it to go. My starting volume, I can't imagine, is actually going to matter because what should ultimately determine how much I can concentrate it is the ABV.
 
Right, but the freezing removes water, and therefore volume, thus increasing the abv. Theoretically, removing 5, 10, or 20 gallons is all one and the same, the only difference being time to freeze.

Practically, of course, removing that much percentage of liquid to that high an abv creates a number of difficulties, but from an academic perspective, more water should have no effect other than more ice to pull out.
 
True, but will freezing pull 50% of the water out? Maybe. But, lets say that he has 20% ABV with 10 gallons. He adds 5 gallons. Now his ABV is less. My simple brain calculates that to 15% ABV. Now, he freezes it, draws off 50% of the water, and winds up with 30% ABV. Sure, it's higher than the 20% he started with, but it's still less than the 40% he could have had if he got it to 20%, then froze it.
 
But I think the limiting fact is not the volume, but the abv. In other words, I think pulling 50% or even 75% of the volume out is less of an issue than getting the liquid to freeze at reasonable temps beyond a certain abv (the reason you can leave vodka in the fridge and not beer).

Of course, I'm talking out my @ss, since I have never tried pulling 50-75% of the water out of anything, or making 40% eisbock. But academically... :)

Take colonial applejack. Start with cider, at what 5%? 10%? Freeze concentrated to 30-40%? That's way more than 50% water removed.

Of course, I'm not Thomas Jefferson either, so again, hello, I'm a talking @ss.
 
the_bird said:
My two cents, why do a batch size that small? If you have 5 gallons of your 1200 post-boil wort, that's still only going to be about 2-2.5 gallons of final product when all is said and done.

You really want to do all this work to end up with a gallon and a half of "freeze-whiskey"?
Click to expand...


Yup...not much different than AppleJack...please be careful...
 
homebeerbrewer said:
True, but will freezing pull 50% of the water out? Maybe. But, lets say that he has 20% ABV with 10 gallons. He adds 5 gallons. Now his ABV is less. My simple brain calculates that to 15% ABV. Now, he freezes it, draws off 50% of the water, and winds up with 30% ABV. Sure, it's higher than the 20% he started with, but it's still less than the 40% he could have had if he got it to 20%, then froze it.
Click to expand...

We get all of that Rick... But there is no magic law that says you have to take 50% of the water out. I'm going to take as much as I can out through the freeze concentrating process. Like we're saying, the main limiting factor should basically only be ABV. It'll get to a point whete the ABV is so high, i wont be able to freeze it any more.

Let's just say the limit is 45% abv for arguments sake and short of using liquid nitrogen, I wont be able to freeze it any more once it hits that point. In that scenario, it doesn't matter what the volume is I start with. If I start with five gallons of 20% abv, in theory, I'll only be able to remove a little more than 50%. If I start with 10 gallons of 10% abv, I should be able to remove around 75%. And they'll both get me to the same spot.
 
wolfstar said:
Yup...not much different than AppleJack...please be careful...
Click to expand...

Throughout this thread I've said that I absolutely want this to actually taste ok but this really just an experiment to 1) see if I can learn anything about fermenting out high ABV beers and I think, personally, I have learned a few things and 2) see if I can learn anything about freeze concentration (and we haven't gotten to that point yet).

This was never about just trying to make something that would make people fall down. Buying a bottle of rum would have been a lot easier.
 
i think he meant it regarding the fact that freeze distillation also concentrates bad things like methanol. not that I think there's a good chance of you going blind.
 
So, Cape, what's your plan now? You were going to freeze as soon as it hit 20%, but now that you've diluted, your FG and abv will be different. So do you have a new target, or are you basically just going to see where it settles out and freeze then?
 

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